


Heartless Witch

by sugarby



Series: Taletober [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, One Shot, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 02:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16461902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarby/pseuds/sugarby
Summary: "—if you’re asking whether or not I actually care, I don’t. Not in the slightest. The little trace of any feeling is just...wiped clean. I think that's the point."Hajime's diagnosis of the situation—of Tooru—is this: He still has sense for his feelings; they aren't completely gone and he isn't completely cold and emotionless. He can't feel not because he no longer holds the emotions but because it literally and figuratively hurts to without a heart to contain them in.(i.e. Tooru trades his broken heart with a witch and has to endure the painful consequence of being unable to love Hajime, who's desperate for him to get it back).





	Heartless Witch

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for many months and wanted it done and posted in Summer but now it's become a piece for my October [writing project](https://archiveofourown.org/series/562672) instead. I've so little time to write these days, I figured if I didn't post this now then I probably never would.
> 
> Sorry for the mess of editing errors you might encounter before I manage a good, proper read through after all this time. For now, I hope this is still readable and decent ❤ ( ´ ▽ `; )
> 
> _Because I like to pair songs to my stories: You Are The Reason_ by _Calum Scott._

It's tragic from the start; everything is chaotic, messy and dark like an unfolding storm.  
  
The end of summer coincides with the end of Tooru's world, so he's convinced himself at fourteen, bundled up on a chair and crying alone in his grandmother’s shop that’s closed for the evening. He coughs up a sob. To experience heartbreak at this tender, innocent age... He blames himself for not being courageous enough to confess in the years his and Hajime's lives have been interwoven. He sobs harder in to his legs and doesn't hear the shop door open or the click of heels against the linoleum flooring, submerged in his misery.

"Hey, Kid, you got any more Jelly tarts? The people at the cliffside are brutal, taking them all before I can get my fill."  
  
Tooru sniffles and angles his head up. The sign hanging on the door reads closed ever since his grandmother and he left to partake in the festival, and she'd locked it too.  
  
The woman who entered stares like she doesn't know exactly what she's looking at, tilting her head side to side and so. Under an arm, she cradles a bag filled to the top with Jelly Tarts. “Hey, you." She pokes him on then nose.

Tooru jolts back, eyes wide. He edges back as much as possible in the chair, feet scraping and slipping along the seat in panic. "H-How'd you get in?!"  
  
She holds up a finger with a purple hue glowing from its tip, "With magic. How else?"

Tooru hasn't seen magic until now. He's heard—everyone in this town knows about magic from books and apparent sightings of it being used.

"I'm..." She thinks but can't remember her last name anymore over the thousands of times she's been branded as 'witch' in contempt. "Blair Witch, I guess. What you crying about?"

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t, but I can make the pain go away. I can take your heart.”  
  
Tooru doesn't know what that's meant to mean but he grasps a concept and stares at the palm of the hand he kept clutched over his chest, the heartbreak so overwhelmingly similar to genuine organ failure. "...My heart?"  
  
A crack of lightning. In the space of that loud moment where the darkened bakery was lit up, he got a glimpse of her. Smooth skin with the faintest trace of hairs. Straight magenta hair reaching her calves, curled up at the end thickly like a dagger. Chilling blue eyes. Low cut, sparkly, eggplant coloured dress and black ankle boots with silver, star-shaped buckles. It's not the long, sagging, black hat on her head that gives her away, it's how she's appeared like as a saviour.  
  
Tooru believes in the magic. In _her_. Slowly, he lifts his hands, stretching them outward. "...Take it from me. I don't want it to hurt anymore."  
  
"Know how this works, kid?"  
  
"I don't care. You can do it, right?"  
  
"Hey, I'm asking 'cause I don't know how it works either, just that it does." She’s never done this before, but being a witch has given her reason to know. To hear tales and rumours and know from the scattered pieces spoken which is truth. She puts a hand on his chest where his heart is, "I think I sort of...actually, here." She presses her hand flat against Tooru's chest, and keeps pushing.  
  
Tooru watches her push in and disappear, a hue of purple radiating around like a portal as it sinks further. It tickles inside, her nails brushing past bones, moving closer to the hastening beats. "W-Will it hurt?"  
  
She scoffs, "More than it does now?"  
  
Tooru guesses not. He's heard of witches—everyone and their neighbour's dog has. It’s life now, living among a handful without knowing. It can be the loner in the trench coat with a fire in his eyes and a fire spell in his hands. It could be the generous, old lady who gives children sweets. Tooru’s thought of them as cruel and terrorising and all sorts from children’s fiction Blair not what he expected.

“In return, you get my powers. That’s the condition. But you have to make sure—” she leans forward, their noses almost bumping, “You have to be really sure that you want this.” It’s there, the unspoken but obvious fact that he needs to be sure because there’s no going back.  
  
Tooru hears but all he knows is he can’t see himself ever not feeling so heartbroken unless they do this. “Take my heart. I want it to stop hurting.” 

Blair would be a liar to say she’s not enthralled by his conviction at such a young age.  
  
The hardest part wasn't saying yes at all. The question for power in return for his heart was almost too easy to accept. Everything hurt: breathing, waking up, walking hurt, thinking hurt, knowing hurt. He wanted everything to stop!  
  
He wanted Hajime to look at him the way that girl looked at Hajime.  
  
He wanted to be the one to kiss him.  
  
The witch holds the still beating heart in her hands, keeping it in place with sharp, ruby painted nails. She consumes it in one ginormous bite and a single swallow like a monster eating fresh fruit.  
  
Tooru clutches his chest through his shirt at pain he shouldn’t feel. He squeezes his eyes shut at tears he ought to not shed. When composed, he thanks her simply just to. Hours pass and he can’t help the guilt in his hollow chest. Like his unrequited love, though, he supposes it too shall pass and he’ll eventually feel nothing.

   
  
* *

 

  
Tooru regrets it upon waking up the next day in his own bed miles back home, feeling a great pain in his chest when he thinks of Hajime.  
  
He thinks of Hajime and it hurts.  
  
So much he thinks he’ll _die_.  
  
It's a week before he calls it and moves away—leaves behind his school, his few close friends and his talent for Volleyball—to permanently live with his grandmother in a seaside town. As he says goodbye, watching the town he knew go by through the window as his parents' car rolls up the road and onto the freeway, it feels like he's lost a considerable part of himself.  
  
The twisted humour in it all is that he can't even cry about it, so he laughs.

 

 

* * *

 

  
Three years on, the seaside town looks and feels the same as ever to Hajime.

He steps off the ferry. He walks up along the bridge connecting the port to the town and he breathes it all in again like he does every year—the fresh air, the glistening sea that stretches out for miles like an endless dream, the cobblestones on the walkways and making up the half-walls that hold stories and proof of time in their worn out scratches and fading shades of gray. The patches of grass where a single or coupled flower blooms in one spot like a sign of single hope.  
  
Hajime readjusts the straps of his backpack so it's tighter, he breathes out and relaxes and he carries on up the cobblestones.  
  
It’s a typical seaside town where the houses and buildings ascend in height and curve round in cobblestone pathways and walls. Sunlight peeking between buildings, horizons glowing beyond the seaside hills and radiating boats docked near the shore. The small town spreads out largely, one side a cluster of markets and busy people, the other side for people to walk by, relax and enjoy the restaurants. Further up ahead are more houses. After, detached from the houses on either side, is a small cafe shop owned and run by a grandmother, and her grandson who moved in a few years ago.  
  
Decorations are everywhere like always this time of year in all the colours of the rainbow but mostly the theme colours of the festival: indigo and purple in honour of the seas creatures to be praised: Jellyfish. It can sound funny to visitors but every year, at the end of Summer, a collective of them swim near the shore of the town and move in motion to the various lights surrounding the town.  
  
"So tonight's the tonight," one guy he passes by says to another sitting with him on the cobblestone half wall. "You think any will show this time?"  
  
“The witches?" The other guy makes a dismissive scoff.  
  
"Why not? They love Jelly tarts, everyone knows that.”  
  
"So do you.”  
  
"Ah, yeah, I do!" The guy laughs stupidly, face flushed. "Ain't there that witch in that shop up there, though?"  
  
"The last time a witch came, she took his heart. He's a heartless witch now. They say they don't give a crap about anything, that they're just monsters with no sympathy. He could attack us and wouldn't lose any sleep."  
  
Every year, there's this kind of talk; paranoid assumptions on what heartless witches are capable of just because a couple tried to start an uprising forty years or so back. It's laughable, the things they think the boy in the shop is capable of. They assume the worst because he's heartless and shouldn’t feel bad about using his magic against someone, but Hajime thinks people with hearts who do bad things regardless are the real monsters.  
  
If he were younger, he’d yell at them like before when it was other people; back then he’d shout _'He's not like that, shut up!'_ and get an earful from his parents later who would apologise for him. He did it for Tooru's sake but it was never enough to make him come outside, too afraid of facing the chastising in person.

That was his life for over a year, never showing his face past the bedroom window. Hiding behind long curtains.

Hajime asked him before what made it especially hard to go outside. 

> Tooru said, “ _...I can’t ask them to accept me when I don’t accept myself."_

A little older now and aware people are just speaking out of their ignorant asses, Hajime doesn’t even twitch at the nonsense gossip these days—even the ludicrous ones about Tooru stealing the faces of people who don't tell him what he wants to hear. Every rumour is crazier and harsher than the last.

Some people think he's a monster, but the real monster is the witch who took advantage of a fourteen year old's desperation and stole his heart.  
  
Hajime stands outside the shop and stares up at it, noting its hardly different from the last time he came here. He looks at the note in his hand, at the hand drawn map and writing:

> _ Iwa-chan, it’s been a while, so here’s a map of the shop incase you don’t recognise it! It's detailed but even you should be able to read it, right?  _
> 
> _P.S. Don’t mind the mob of girls that might waiting to see me. I'm so busy, though, that I can't even meet my best friend! What should I do? _
> 
> _ Tooru ;D’._

Hajime scrunches it in a fist, "Like hell, Crappykawa."  
  
"Um, excuse me," a girl's voice comes from behind him, "Is this the place where Tooru lives? I kinda wanted to talk with him a little—"  
  
"He's _dead_."  
  
She gasps, "E-Eh?! No way..."  
  
Hajime pulls open the door to the shop and walks inside.

  
  
*  *

  
  
  
"You did _what_?! How could you tell her that I'm dead?! _Me_ , dead?! _Unbelievable_!"  
  
" _You're_ unbelievable." Hajime holds out the badly drawn map on creased paper, "What's this shit? You call this a map?  
  
"Well it's not like I studied art or anything. At least I went out of my way and drew that for you."  
  
"My bad, you really shouldn't have."  
  
"As time passes, you get older, Iwa-chan, and those forehead wrinkles get thicker."  
  
"What do wrinkles have to do with your crappy artistry?!"  
  
"I'm just teasing, Iwa-chan. No one's asking you to build a rocket, I know your brain can't handle that much—Ow! _You_ _hit_ me?!" Tooru rubs his upper arm, scandalised.  
  
"Next time, leave out the drawing and the bit about a mob of girls! There was _one_!”  
  
"Jealous?"  
  
Hajime braces the counter, prepared to vault over it. Tooru screams and ducks down with his hands up. "Welcome me back like a normal person, Trashykawa!"  
  
Tooru's head slowly rises above the countertop, "You can be so scary at times!" He stands when he’s sure enough he won’t be hit again and dusts off his apron that has no marks whatsoever. “Tea, Iwa-chan?  
  
"Yeah, thanks."  
  
"Get comfy while I work."  
  
Hajime sits at the small round table for two against the window adjacent to the counter.  
  
"Tobio-chan called me."  
  
"Kageyama? That Tobio?"  
  
"I don't know another, thank God. Can you imagine? One's irritating enough, but two? Anyway, he called and—"  
  
"He has your number? You were an ass to him in high school."  
  
" _Anyway_ , he wished me well. I told him he's three years too late. Then he asked how much it hurts—being like this—and I told him not as much as this conversation." He goes and laughs at his own joke like he's the funniest man alive while coming over with a pot of freshly boiled tea and a cup. He pours the tea in a white, porcelain cup, and its floral scent instantly floods the room in a sensory paradise of zest and spice.  
  
Hajime brings the cup near his nose for a cautious sniff before a sip.  
  
"Honey and ginger.” Tooru returns to the counter a little giddy, hands behind his back and a spring in his steps. “You’re expected to help out, you know. Free lodging and all.”  
  
“Obviously. I owe your Grandma.”  
  
“She’s kind of your grandma too. Don’t worry, the workload isn’t great.”  
  
“She works hard. _You_  slack off."  
  
“That’s presumptuous of you. I’ll have you know I’m behind all the cookies tasting so sweet and looking so cute. It’s talent! Art! Iwa-chan, don’t laugh!"  
  
“You’re just so in love with yourself.”

Tooru would usually comeback with something along the lines of ‘you love me too!’, and as annoying as that is, Hajime prefers that over the blank look he gets. Like the translation is lost. “Don’t mind me, Iwa-chan. Cookies shouldn’t be about looking cute anyway. As long as they taste good, right?”

“You never actually told me why she took your heart."  
  
"It was a conditional trade. My heart for her magic." Tooru hardly uses the magic that was passed to him. He didn’t trade for them, so if he uses them it's like he’s accepting the circumstances.  
  
"But why ask her to do it at all? There was a reason, right?"

> _ 'It's my fault. Say it.'_

"The why isn't so important."  
  
"Bullshit."  
  
"It hurt to think about you so much I thought I’d die. Is that what you want to hear?"  
  
"If it's the truth."

“Then it makes you a sadist.”  
  
Hajime rolls his eyes. “...Listen, I’m three years late saying this but she was just a girl. We met but we didn’t know each other." He helped her win a prize and she just kinda clung to him for the rest of the evening. And then she was caught in a moment and she kissed him. “If I’d thought for a second it’d make you jealous or something—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Am I wrong?”

“I wasn’t jealous, I was annoyed she made it look so easy—everything I’d agonised over for _ages_. It's like I wasted time."  
  
"What's stopping you now?"  
  
"Besides the fact that I'm _literally_ heartless and therefore incapable of feeling any emotion without a searing pain bringing me closer to my death? Guess I’m just too busy. Anyway, thanks but you don't owe me an expl—"

"You're like this because of me."  
  
"And am I so horrible to be around?"

“A _nightmare_. Why didn’t you tell me the reason?”  
  
“I just did.”  
  
" _Before_.”  
  
“It doesn’t change that it’s happened.”  
  
"God, you’re so...don't you see at all how this fucking irritates me?!"  
  
Tooru looks so serious, it's like he's a doppelgänger. He looks like Tooru Oikawa but where’s the annoying flair? The charming and mischievous twinkle in his eyes? "I can understand your perspective, but if you’re asking whether or not I actually care, I don’t. Not in the slightest. The little trace of any feeling is just...wiped clean. I think that's the point."  
  
"You don't _have_  to be."  
  
"She's already eaten my heart, I watched her. Now which biscuits do you want?"  
  
Hajime sighs. "The ones you don't like." 

Tooru brings over two raisin shortbread biscuits on a small plate and stands by the table, pensive. “So the festival's tonight."  
  
"Duh." Hajime halves a biscuit with his teeth and munches on one.  
  
"Whatever we do, I'm sure it'll be nice."

Three years ago, the festival began like it usually did for them. He ate blue dyed cotton candy and got so much over his mouth and Hajime would say it looked like he tried to eat the sky. They followed the adults along the path under the string of blue lantern lights; their paper bodies knocked together in dispute against the wind.

Tooru coerced his best friend in to trying to scoop up goldfish with him, secretly awaiting the opportunity for their soaked hands to bump and meet as gold fins swam by. Toward the closing of the festival, the jellyfish collective would near the town as candlelights were sent to float cross the ocean, and Tooru would make his wish with the rest of the residents (to spend another amazing year with Hajime).  
  
Not long after, before their parents lead them to his grandmother's shop like always before they drove miles back home, a girl they didn’t know came to Hajime, crying about how she couldn’t win any prizes. Then when he won something for her and she kissed him. That memory ends there, bitterly as always. He focuses on his best friend’s face.

Hajime is already staring at him.

Tooru knows why. Instead of causing more worry, he tries to lighten the mood with a soft smile, "You should be enjoying the tea I made for you.”  
  
"Any idiot can pour hot water, stop fishing for compliments."  
  
"I did more than that!" 

The elder, sweet lady who owns the establishment, Tooru’s Grandmother, appears from the staircase at the far end of the room, greeting with a soft smile. "Thought I heard Hajime-kun's voice.”   
  
Hajime hugs her and officially feels at home. "I'm back, Granny. Thanks for having me."  
  
"Hush, you're practically my grandson too." She sees Tooru point his tongue out at Hajime, conveying: 'told you so, iwa-chan!' "Tooru, stop that. It's no wonder ladies aren't coming round to see you when you behave like that."  
  
"Grandma, he told a girl I was dead!"  
  
Grandma Oikawa pulls back from the hug to laugh loudly, "Good! You’ve gotten mighty arrogant as of late, telling people you’re the life of this place!”  
  
"What's wrong with self-confidence?!"  
  
"Oh, Tooru, you have to admit, you tend to be full of yourself. But I guess that's just the way you turned out. Nothing we can do about that."

“Grandma!”

Grandma Oikawa whispers in Hajime's ear, "It's nice to have you again but does that mean you're gonna try again this year?"  
  
Hajime nods.  
  
“Better not waste my breath trying to dissuade you then.”  
  
"Yeah. Sorry."  
  
"No you're not." Grandma Oikawa reassuringly rubs his head; she can never really be mad at him for making this decision and sticking to it every year. He's kind of admirable this way. A damn fool, she'll say, but admirable.

"Grandma, Iwa-chan'll go in to town later and get the rest of the decorations for us." Tooru says.  
  
Grandma Oikawa's leans sideways, looking over the best friend to give her grandson a skeptical stare, "And what's wrong with _your_  legs, Tooru?"  
  
"I'm running the shop!"  
  
"You can't multitask?”  
  
"He's lazy." Hajime says.  
  
Tooru gasps, "No! Grandma, I can—"  
  
"It’s fine, I'll do it.”  
  
"It's unlike you to be useful, Iwa-chan."  
  
"Want me to come over there and hit you again?"  
  
"Try it!”  
  
"You’re such a jackass! Jackass _kawa_!"  
  
"Stop adding my name to insults!"  
  
"Enough, Tooru," Grandma Oikawa says. "You're getting too excited."  
  
Hajime is brought back to reality by those words. He and she exchange a brief, concerning glance and understand one another.  
  
Tooru tries to meet their gazes with a less excited expression.

* * *

  
  
Hajime's diagnosis of the situation—of Tooru—is this:

He still has sense for his feelings; they aren't completely gone and he isn't completely cold and emotionless. The cheerful and ridiculous parts of him have just become his character. And now and again, he'll feel something and it'll have him clutching his heart at a surge of pain, like a giant needle with the pain amplifying until he calms the emotion away.  
  
He can't feel not because he no longer holds the emotions but because it literally and figuratively hurts to without a heart to contain them in.

 _'It's my fault,'_ Hajime constantly thinks because it's the crush on him and fear of rejection that drove Tooru to trade with the witch. So the very least he can do is find a way to get it back—his best friend's heart.

 

* * *

  
  
They agree to buy everything else Grandma Oikawa needs from the markets together. Taking the long, curved path way back, they get an eyeful of a glorious, summer sky, bathed in blue and dotted with specks of cloud, the blaring sun making the large ocean glimmer like a liquid diamond.  
  
Tooru strolls casually against the backdrop with his arms lazily crossed behind his head, eyes never leaving it, "No matter how many times I see it, it's still beautiful."  
  
Hajime looks at Tooru, "Yeah…” then all of a sudden he’s caught and coughs and looks away. “The view, damn it!”  
  
"What else would we be talking about?"  
  
"The heck should I know, Idiotkawa!"  
  
"Where's the verbal assault coming from all of a sudden?!"  
  
Hajime doesn't know but he's prompted to jam a fist in to Tooru's side anyway and blame it all on him. His stupid eyes, his stupid smile—  
  
"Mommy, wait up!" a small child with her brunet hair in a bun, wearing a pink yukata, struggles to jog up the path past them, her feet in sandals too big that keep slipping under her toes.  
  
A woman a little further ahead stops and turns around, "Come on, Hana. I told you not to wear those, they're too big."

The girl hobbles along, trying her best to justify wearing her pretty sandals by walking properly. She stumbles and falls to her knees in front of Hajime and Tooru, and the sandal tumbles down the curve of the path. "M-My sandal...!" she scarpers, rushing to chase it to the edge.  
  
Hajime curses and rushes after her. "Hey, stop, it's dangerous!"  
  
The woman turns back and is horrified, "Hana, stop!”  
  
Hana reaches out for the sandal, feet grazing the pebbles before the edge of the side, her hand still a bit too far to grab it.  
  
"Wow, that was close."  
  
She’s turns around. Behind her is the magical boy people talk about and her pink sandal hovers in front of her face inside an almost transparent glowing aura.

Hajime looks to Tooru standing there with one hand held out to it, keeping it suspended in the air with what little magic he possess. Hajime has never seen Tooru use magic so freely before, much less in front of people.  
  
The sandal is placed in the girl's hand, where she stares at it before she looks up at Tooru as he crouches down in front of her. "...Thanks."  
  
Tooru gives her his best smile, with teeth and creased eyes, “You're welcome. Your dress is very pretty, by the way."  
  
She blushes, her eyes sparkling.  
  
"Geez, such a flirt." Hajime mumbles, but even he has to admit that his best friend is pretty cool.  
  
The woman arrives and throws herself down to the girl, hugging her, "Hana, I was so worried!" The woman sighs, calming herself. She looks up at the two young guys, at Tooru.  
  
Tooru steps back, "I-I was just—"  
  
"Thank you!" The woman bows her head to him, "You saved her, my little girl. If not for you then..."

Tooru, who has never been on the receiving end of kindness like this since getting his magic powers, is speechless. 

She stands up, her daughter in her arms and the sandal in her small hands. "You know, I try not to listen to the nonsense the older folks say about witches. I always wondered how heartless they could be, but you...Tooru, is it?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am. I’m Tooru Oikawa.”  
  
"Tooru..." The woman repeats with a fond smile, the same fondness in her eyes. "I think you're amazing."  
  
"I-I'm not, really! I mean, well—she was in trouble so I—"  
  
Hajime presses a hand firmly against his back and he's instantly silenced. "Yeah. Too amazing. It gets annoying sometimes."  
  
"Iwa-chan..."  
  
The woman smiles, "Thought so." She tugs on her daughter's hand and waves to Tooru one last time as she leads her daughter away. Her daughter waves her small, chubby hand and gives her biggest smile—toothy and genuine with rosy cheeks.  
  
Tooru stands there awestruck. Even when Hajime's elbow nudges in to his ribs and he tells him they should get going, it’s not as simple.  
  
"This is bad..." He mutters when Hajime takes the path by himself as some kind of petty act. And he still looks so good, the sunlight gleaming across his muscular back making him more beautiful. Tooru laughs, "The mother and daughter were hard enough but if you compliment me like this too, Iwa-chan..." He grasps his heart, sharp pain attacking him.

 

* * *

  
  
Tooru's giddily kicking his legs about, staring up at the moon in the night sky from the back porch of his grandma's shop. With a couple hours left before the festival, there's time to enjoy the freshly cut watermelon in the summer heat. "She called me _amazing_! Did you hear, Iwa-chan?! I'm _amazing_!"  
  
"Don't let it get to your head." Hajime says even though he'd love for Tooru's confidence to come back. And yeah, he is amazing.  
  
Tooru grins, "I'm just so _happy_!" and not a moment after, he breathes in sharply and a hand flies to his chest.  
  
"Shit! You oka—"  
  
"I'm fine." Tooru breathes in, out, slowly. He's trained himself many times and mastered the art of not feeling this much, while keeping his personality the same. He's learnt to express his feelings through his persona, so that he can remain as he's always been without his heart taking damage for his mistake. He decides the pain is bearable, that he can learn to live with his chest pain too so long as Hajime never leaves his side and doesn’t have to suffer with him. He leans back on his palms and gazes up at the sky, "Hey, Iwa-chan, know how I'm always looking at the moon?"  
  
"Are you?"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"Then yeah?" Hajime look up at the moon, "It's big and bright, it’ll attract anyone—"  
  
"To me, it looks like like a portal to another place. I'd like to go there."  
  
"It's the _moon_."  
  
"Yeah but just imagine if we could be more than what we are. I'd like it if the moon could take me back there. On that night, there was a full moon too." Tooru's smile is too sad to belong on his face. He begins to nod his his head left to right, humming a song before he sings. While Tooru isn’t a natural-born singer, he could always sound much more peaceful and happier. Not this bleak recital without even any light in his eyes other than the reflection of the moon. "'Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like On Jupiter and Mars.'”  
  
It’s calm, soft and gentle, Tooru’s voice is. Where the gap for emotion is leaves a unattractive vibration in his throat, like a machine. There is hardly any lift in tone or raise in volume—it’s not singing, it’s reciting.  
  
“'In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me'.”  
  
Hajime gulps and his despair and guilt slither down, settling in his stomach nauseously.  
  
“'Fill my heart with song and let me sing for ever more. You are all I long for, all I worship and adore. In other words, please be true. In other words'…” Tooru’s voice stops instead of fading out. The words he purposely misses out speak louder than anything when he looks from the moon to Hajime, the small smile on his face expressing what he can't and even an apology.  
  
Hajime’s fists clench, his heart digs deeper in to his resolve to take back his best friend's heart for him.  
  
“If she doesn’t show again—”  
  
“She will! She _has_ to!”  
  
“It’s been three years, Iwa-chan. I won’t cry if you can’t do it. I won’t care at all.”  
  
“You’re giving up?!"  
  
“I’m saving you.”  
  
"I’m not the one who needs saving, idiot!”  
  
“I can’t let you keep doing this. We’ve spent three Summers of our lives waiting. Stay home next time. Be happy. Be _loved_.”  
  
Like finding someone else to love him is so simple. Annoyed, Hajime turns his head away.

Tooru chuckles. Magic in his fingers, he floats a slice of watermelon from the plate between them over to Hajime's lap. "You look so glum that anyone would think she took _your_  heart, Iwa-chan."

"Don't be stupid." Hajime bites in to the slice viciously, "Only you’re moronic enough to let her do that!” She could've if she wanted to: taken his heart instead. _'But'_ , he thinks while juice drips down his chin, _'she already did'_.

 

* * *

  
  
At fourteen, Hajime didn’t know he liked boys, but he knew he liked Tooru.

 _Just_ Tooru.  
  
It was a moment too late after Tooru fled, a girl’s lips on Hajime’s before he pulls her off. “What are you doing?! You know I like—” he stopped, lips curled in under his teeth.  
  
She blinked, head tilted. "Like who?”

Hajime shook his head. "Never mind."

“Thanks for winning me the prize. I wanted to thank Tooru too," she looked in the direction he ran off in, "Should we go after him?”  
  
Hajime said yes and went alone.

Tooru was found halfway between his grandmother's shop and the festival, quieter than usual and distant, pulling away from consoling hugs. He said he didn't care if Hajime liked that girl.

Hajime said he didn't.

Tooru regaled his meeting with the witch, the trade he made, and vaguely detailed the way in which he'd become heartless.

Hajime knew every word of it was true.  
  
The witch didn't show the next year, or the year after, or even after that. Tooru spent three years as emotionless as possible, losing friends and deterring customers who once loved his charm. Hajime spent them clinging to the memory of a crying Tooru and hating jelly tarts.

 

* * *

  
  
"Iwa-chan?"  
  
Hajime stops at the front door and looks back, hand on the handle and the door ajar, "I'll just be a sec."  
  
"You really don't have to."  
  
"It's no problem. Just a couple sodas 'cause it gets hotter in the evening.”

“Yes, that's how Summer works."

“Watch it.”  
  
Tooru stares at him longer than necessary, trying to gauge whether he's being told a lie or not. He decides not and balances on the back of his heels, arms folded behind his back, "Alright. I'll leave the pastries out to cool in the mean time.”  
  
"Okay."  
  
"The festival will wait for me. My jelly tarts are famous by now."  
  
Hajime snorts as he opens the door, "You forget that Granny does most of the work."  
  
"You'd forget your brain if it wasn't inside your skull."  
  
Hajime hurls the nearest shoe back, and the squeal and thud he hears between the click and close of the door send him off with satisfaction.

 

*  *

  
  
His feet are sluggish in their descent along the cobblestone path, weaving through the few passersby who haven't already made it to the centre of town where everyone gathers. The festival always ends near the cliffside where the best view of the jellyfish are.  
  
Hajime buys a few different flavours of soda from a stall, packs them in a loose, plastic bag, then heads for the store.  
  
It shouldn't take too long for the tarts to be baked. Hajime's not a gluttonous eater but, really, it isn't his fault if they're delicious enough to make him eat up to seven. He broke a record once, facing against Tooru and four other kids: fourteen jelly tarts in under a minute. The secret was to cut out the banter Tooru was too obvious in trying to bring him in to, and to inhale more than chew.  
  
To do that now would be ridiculous, but it's nice to look back.

Hajime sighs.  
  
"Shut up, don't be ridiculous!"  
  
"Uh, hello, they supposedly come every year!"  
  
"Like hell you actually saw one. A witch, really? Yeah, right."  
  
Hajime stands still. On the other side of the market are a young man and woman, about mid twenties, in an argument. He waits, holding on to a very slim thread, but a thread all the same.

"I just saw her back that way. Golden eyes, long purple hair—"  
  
Hajime gapes.  
  
The girls huffs, "C'mon. It's dark out right now. You could've easily seen—"  
  
"I know what I saw!"  
  
"You think you see a lot of things!"  
  
"Which way did you see her?!"  
  
They stop and turn, Hajime standing in front of them, determined.

The girl hesitantly points in a direction.  
  
"Thanks." Hajime says and runs.

*  *

 

Blair is beautiful in the sense that she’s meant to be attract people, to lure them in. Even more beautiful under the moonlight and next to ocean by the beach. To everyone she meets and leaves, like a fleeting dream they chase but can’t even grasp, she is beautiful and otherworldly. She's sitting on a boulder, her legs to her chest and tied with her arms, her chin melancholically on top.

To Hajime, she’s a monster. What would’ve happened if the roles were reversed and he’d been the one crying, heartbroken, and she’d offered him the contract? Standing in front of her right with all this rage in his chest, most of it burning on Tooru’s behalf, he’ll say he would’ve turned her down.

_'So how hurt must he have been to accept it?'_

She turns and it's like her eyes are glowing, the moon illuminating over her, "Want something?” 

Hajime steadies his voice even though he’s furious, "Give it back.”

"What?”

“Give it back, his heart.”

“Whose?”

“TOORU’S HEART! You took it from him and he needs it back! He's not the same without it. He tries to act like he's okay but he's suffering!”  

“Can’t.”  
  
“There’s got to be a way!”

She shrugs, “Sorry, kid.”  
  
"How can you just do what you did and feel nothing?! He was a kid when you—"  
  
"No one was taken advantage of. I asked if he was sure and he said yes." She asked him out of courtesy but she knew all the while that he wouldn't think about the consequences much. She asked just to say that she hadn't broken any moral code, and practically shoved the trade on to him.  
  
Hajime scoffs because she's heartless, because any fourteen year old with an imagination and drive to be perceived as amazing would sell their soul for magical powers. But that's not why Tooru traded his heart. 

"At the time, I was looking for a way out." she says, not justifying but explaining herself. Not expecting forgiveness but expecting a clear picture. "I wanted a heart to be with the person I loved...then I found out he'd already settled down in to a family. Guess that's karma."

“Just give it back."   
  
"You aren't listening. I told you already—"  
  
"No, _you're_ the one not listening!"  
  
“He has my magic now and it was weak to begin with; I hardly practiced."  
  
"Then what can I do since you're so worthless?! I need a way to save him!"

What if she still refuses?

What can he do?

What will he tell Tooru after all this time?

Hajime's fists clench.

"Agihara. If anyone can do something, it should be her. She's a witch who comes by sometimes and stays just up ahead. She tends to put catches and prices on the end of things, and she can be mean."  
  
"I don't care."  
  
"I’m warning you for a reason.”  
  
"Up the mountains, you said?"  
  
It bothers her a little that she can’t scare him off. Perhaps because it was all too easy for the guy she loved to be scared of her newfound supernaturalness. She points to another set of stairs at the end of the beach, brickwork curling round in ascension. “Up those stairs and past the shrine, go in to the darker reaches. Her tatty hut might still be standing.” 

Hajime doesn’t thank her, he just repeats the information and rushes away.  
  
Blair, with a bitterness, a loneliness and a memory of a failed romance, she holds herself and thinks it must be nice...to be in love and loved.

 

*  *

 

The hut is tacky—stacked sticks tied with hay on the outside, with gaps for windows and sprawled grass for a garden. But on the inside, it’s like a library of witchcraft, books and apparatus about in every reach of the place. And a fireplace with ornaments across its head. 

Magical deception at its oddest.  
  
Agihara doesn't look old but she is. It's obvious in the way she speaks and the tired, irritated expressions she keeps making since Hajime came in without knocking. She has white hair as long as Blair's but fluffy at the ends, and her eyes are deep brown. The skin of her face is smooth but the skin on her ringed fingers shows veins and wrinkles where time has passed.  
  
"It’s very rude to stare at a lady.” she says.  
  
Hajime quickly introduces himself and tells her what Blair said about Tooru, and that he's here to fix everything. He's been prepared for the last three years.  
  
"Can't help you.”

“Not even gonna try?” 

"I misspoke. I won't help you." Agihara doesn't look sorry at all. She explains that she doesn't want to trade with him because she wants to keep her magic. Unlike most witches who eventually come to regret their snap decision, she thinks her life is better lived alone and powerful.  
  
"I need to get my friend’s heart back! He needs it!”  
  
“He traded it.”

“I know all that crap, okay? And, look, I don’t want your magic, just—”  
  
"If you put your finger on a boiling pot, does it burn instantly or do conditions have to be met first? It's just the way it's done; it's what's fair."  
  
"My best friend hasn't been able to feel happy about a damn thing for three years and you think that's fair?!"  
  
"It was his choice."  
  
"Because of _me_!" Hajime indicates to himself with violent slaps to his chest. "I made him feel like he needed to! Like there was no other way out of the crap he was feeling! It's my fault, so I'm going to get his heart back and I'm not leaving until you help me!"  
  
Agihahara stares.  
  
Hajime sits on his knees, bows his head, "Please. I'll do anything!"  
  
Agihara sighs and glances at a book on her table. "There's a spell that'll transfer your heart over to him."

Hajime's head lifts, waiting for the catch.

"Don't look so surprised. It's only natural there are spells to counter other spells. But without receiving magic to sustain your life in place of your heart, you won't last long."  
  
"That's insane"  
  
"You think I don't know that? It was insane when I swapped my heart for magic to attempt bringing my dead son back."  
  
Hajime understands now. Agihara isn't cranky because she's old, she's old- because she's spent a large portion of her life miserable. She's _exhausted_. Magic has screwed her over and she'd rather die bitter than admit defeat and give it up. She wants to tame it to use at her disposal.  
  
"It's still better than having an ounce of magic in me after what it's done to Tooru, you, and any other witch who regrets their choice now" Hajime walks over to the book and holds his hand over the page open to the transfer spell.  
  
"Remember: this is your choice."  
  
"I know. At least I have it."  
  
"Kids these days have too much confidence.”  
  
"Witches might do this for themselves but I'm doing this for someone I care about."  
  
Agihara prepares the spell and places one hand above his, her other against his chest. "You're wrong, child. We witches, we've always had a loved one in mind. Still do." She's got a smile on her face, a reflection of a happier time in her life. She's vividly visualising her son on his eighteenth birthday, about to blow out his birthday cake candles. "There is always someone we'll sacrifice ourselves for again and again.”  
  
She opens a book on her table to a specific page with scribbly illustrations and a language Hajime can't read. She feels his heart beat rhythmic and an amber glow comes from underneath her hand.  
  
Hajime asks, "Why does anyone have to be sacrificed? Why does anyone need to give up their heart?"  
  
She isn't the kindest person, but she answers him because she can empathise with his inability to comprehend it all. "Long ago, when witches first started showing up, some of them tried to start a war. So a failsafe was created to ensure witches can never fully use their powers—an inhibitor—because people are often driven by their emotions. We find ourselves with all this extra adrenaline."  
  
“Why are you helping me? You seemed adamant to kick me out before."  
  
"Trust me, that isn't completely off the table." She's contrarily flicking through her spell book for the specific one. "'True power is the kind you create in yourself, it's not handed to you'. My son was as hopeless and stubborn as you and he believed in this wholeheartedly."  
  
Hajime doesn't need to ask anymore how it is she's able to live without a heart. She lost it when her son died, now she's just surviving.  
  
"So, in a way, I'm reedeming myself in his honour. Now..." She reads from the book a spell on transferals and the soft glow from her hand brightens to a blinding status until it swallows them entirely in her shack before they can blink.

 

*  *

  
  
  
On the walk back, Hajime looks up at the moon, finding irony in its timing. It was out when Tooru made the trade all those years ago too.

Rather than being a portal to another time and place, Hajime thinks its more suited being compared to hollowness. Specifically the place in his chest. Maybe that's why it's cold and quiet up there.

He laughs. In a few hours, he might not even care.

He might feel nothing.

 

*  *

 

“There you are! Grandma already left and she’s waiting for us by the—"  
  
“I found her.” Hajime says the second he steps in to the shop.  
  
Tooru stands still, silent.

“The witch.”  
  
Tooru flinches. "If...If this is a lie—”

“She was on the beach.”  
  
“And what, you asked her to give me my heart back?"  
  
“Yeah but she was useless, so instead—”  
  
Tooru looks away. It’s hard enough trying to fight off his feelings but when Hajime tries so hard for him and in the end nothing works out, he feels so disappointed. So guilty. “That’s enough.”

Hajime steps forward, "Your heart should come back by tomorrow."  
  
Tooru hangs his head, clenches his fist, bites down on his trembling lips. Should he cry? Can he cry? He staggers to Hajime, “...What?"  
  
Hajime holds him by the shoulders, “Your heart that was taken from you, you’re going to get it back. "  
  
“What about the catch?! The conditions?! What are you giving up for m—” Tooru’s pulled in to a hug and arms are protectively locked around his waist.  
  
“You’re getting your heart back, Tooru.”  
  
“No!” Tooru breaks away and staggers all the way back to the counter. Leaning against it, he clutches his chest and breathes in quick, breathes out shakily. “Iwa-chan, why?!”  
  
“Because you need to feel, and laugh and live like everyone else. And because I love you.”  
  
For a moment, the pain in Tooru's chest freezes. He wants to feel a lot of things. Relief. Anger. Comfort. Sadness. Happy. Can he? After three years, where does he start?  
  
Hajime walks over, holds Tooru's face, “Just couldn’t say it until you could. That wouldn’t have been fair on either of us.”  
  
Tooru hasn’t cried in so long that he can’t be sure he has real tears in his eyes.  
  
Hajime kisses him.  
  
Fireworks go off outside in the town as the people begin celebrating the festival.

Hajime can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Tooru all this time. Wanting to do this but being too afraid. If he hurts every time he feels something now, it'll still be nothing in comparison. Even when the pain becomes unbearable, like it'll kill him.  
  
“Iwa-chan,” Tooru kisses his cheek and under his jaw. “Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan—”  
  
Hajime holds on to the back of Tooru’s head, “Does it hurt?”  
  
“No,” Tooru kisses him again. And again. Securing Hajime’s lips with his own, he wants him close. He wants him _forever._ Tooru exhales breathlessly from the excitement. He smiles and his voice is still as soft and peaceful but he braves the twinge of pain in his heart that shall soon last to put meaning in to it, to let his heart be engulfed in warmth, “In other words…”  
  
Hajime smiles, pulls Tooru’s face to his for another kiss. He leans their foreheads together.  
  
“'I love you'.”

* * *

  
  
  
Tooru awakens to heartbeats.  
  
He looks at himself in the mirror, places a hand over his chest and actually feels them softly beneath his palm. He notices how it beats differently, an extra set like if he had two hearts.  
  
He deliberately envisions Hajime.  
  
_'Iwa-chan. Iwa-chan. Iwa-chan—'_

And it doesn't hurt one bit.  
  
“I love him.” Tooru says, such a great smile coming. And tears, maybe.

He rushes downstairs.

His timing is great, seeing Hajime just entering the shop. "Oh ho, what’s this? Iwa-chan, you’re up so early. Could you hardly sleep after being confessed to?” Tooru flips his fringe with hand, holds his head high to the sunlight and his jawline gleams.  
  
“Get over yourself.”  
  
Tooru laughs. It isn’t the contagious kind but the kind that sweeps away negative emotions from a person and makes them forget what being angry or sad is. It’s sunshine on rainy days, a streak of silver lined across the sky. Still high on his ecstasy for feeling without pain, he says, “I think I'll keep saying it until it you're _begging_ me to stop. love you, Iwa-chan!”  
  
"Oh, God." Hajime rolls his eyes but he's smiling back.  
  
“Iwa-chan, I love you!”  
  
"I love you." Hajime responds and the pain in his chest hits harder. The hardest part for him wasn't saying yes at all. In fact, it was easy to accept. He wanted Tooru happy, and by the fourth confession and stream of tears, Tooru is very happy—the happiest.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to write love stories but I enjoy trying my best to anyway! (─▽─;)
> 
> . The festival is based on the _'Dance Of The Moonlight Jellies'_ festival in _Stardew Valley_ that happens at the end of Summer in the evening. Townsfolk gather at the beach to watch Jellyfish dance, so all the other gimmicks were my additions.
> 
> . _"True power is the kind you create in yourself, it's not handed to you."_ is quoted from Lisa in Gravity Rush 2.


End file.
